Coffin Hollow and Other Ghost Tales Read Online Free PDF Page B

followed and the wife, laughing at him, said she wanted a divorce. Shame mounted upon shame, and the miner returned to work, forgetting his illness.
    When he got back, he told his friends what had happened and swore revenge. Still angry, he began working carelessly. An hour or so later, when a coal car was coming down the tracks, the miner fainted and fell in front of it. The other men did not notice until it was too late, and the car ran over him, crushing his head and legs.
    At the funeral the miners remembered that the dead man had said that, if anything ever happened to him, he would return to get revenge upoo,his wife. The men told his widow, but she just laughed, saying that she was going to marry her lover and move far away from there. As it turned out, the man she was cheating with left town after the accident. She was now left by herself. Heartbroken and very lonely, she was seen only when she went out to buy groceries.
    Then, one dark and dreary night, exactly one year after the accident, a terrible thing happened. It was a little after twelve o’clock when her neighbors heard a scream from the widow’s house. They quickly gathered outside the house and called, but no answer was heard. The men decided to break down the door to find out what had happened.
    When they got to the bedroom the door was locked, and they broke it down to see what was wrong. The widow’s body was lying across the bed, the face scratched beyond recognition.
    What caused this no one is really sure. Could it really have been her husband, who had come back for the revenge he swore that he would take?

    11: Yankee Thrift
    My grandfather, who was an engineer and demanded reason and fact for everything that happened, often made the statement that those who believed in ghosts were fools. When he spoke of the old house on Eighth Avenue in Huntington, West Virginia, however, his attitude changed.
    Soon after he returned from the Spanish-American War, he learned of a beautiful, two-story house that was for sale at a very low price — so low, in fact, that he thought the price had been misquoted. Since he was a thrifty Yankee, he was afraid of missing the opportunity of a lifetime; therefore, he rushed to make the purchase. Upon closing the sale, he was told that the previous owner had been unable to keep a renter for the property; for some reason no one would live in the house for more than one night at a time. Renters would usually leave before morning and send a teamster in to move their furniture the next day. Grandfather decided that after the family was settled in their new home he would pay a visit to one of the former occupants. This is the story that was related to him.

    A very wealthy widow, who had decided to vacation in Boston, left her Negro maid Clara and the maid’s husband John in charge of the house. Clara decided that while the owner was away she would take in washing to make a little money. John, returning home from work one day, saw a white man leaving by the back door and suspected the worst of his wife. Later, when he confronted Clara with his accusation, she accused him of the same infidelity. One word led to another, and in the heat of the argument John stabbed her in the throat. Running to escape his knife, she started up the stairs, but the loss of blood was too much; she slumped, falling backward like a heap of wet wash to the bottom of the stairs.
    Realizing what he had done, John grabbed her by the hair of the head and pulled her into the kitchen where he tried to finish his job, but she revived and with the strength of desperation pulled the china closet to the floor. This only infuriated John more, and with one quick swipe of the knife he completely cut her head from her body. Later he threw the head into the coal-burning cookstove and dismembered the rest of her body. Several years later he was convicted and executed for his wife’s murder.
    After recounting this story, the former renter declared